Jaguar turns its polarizing Type 00 prototype into a four-door Type 01 GT

To see what is behind a Jaguar Type 01, the driver looks at the base of the windscreen. There is no rear windscreen. A camera feed Jaguar calls ClearSight sits in the full-width soundbar instead, set at the height of the door mirrors so the eye has less refocusing to do than with most such displays ^[9]. To change the cabin temperature or the audio, the driver uses a 7-inch smartphone-style touchscreen between the front seats. Wired found no physical switchgear ^[12].

Jaguar's pitch is about arrival. Its press material calls the car "A bold grand tourer that never arrives unnoticed, like all the best Jaguars of the past" ^[16]. The launch figures fit that pitch: 62 mph from standstill in 3.2 seconds, then another 4 seconds to 112 mph ^[5]. Wired's reviewer, whose trip JLR partly paid for ^[15], wrote: "I've been driven in it, and it feels like the acceleration never ends" ^[17].

On this evidence the Type 01 is for someone who wants to be noticed arriving and will accept a camera in place of a rear window to get it ^[16]. That owner will use the sprint now and then. The climate screen, the rear view and the highway range come up on nearly every drive. The EPA rating is up to 400 miles from a 118 kWh usable battery ^[19], but Jaguar's own figure at sustained highway speed is up to 320 miles ^[14], a gap of 80 miles, or 20 percent ^[18]. For a grand tourer 5,235 mm long ^[13], 320 is the figure to plan a trip around. A 13-minute stop on a 350 kW charger adds up to 200 miles, by Jaguar's numbers ^[8].

Of the changes from prototype to production, the extra doors are the one an owner uses daily, each time someone gets into the back ^[2]. Whether the finished car wins over people the Type 00 fight put off cannot be read from a launch event ^[10]. Wired's account covers the car and the reveal. It does not report orders ^[7].

Anyone relaunching a product after a public fight can sort each feature on two questions: does the user meet it on every use, and could anyone judge it on launch day. On the Type 01, the extra doors land in the every-use, judged-on-launch-day box. The sprint and the 23-inch wheels are occasional and easy to judge at an event ^[2]. Every-use and still unjudged are the camera rear view, the touch-only climate controls and the 320-mile highway range, since no owner has lived with them yet ^[1]. Only a long trip will test the charging claim. I'd weight the every-use, unjudged box most heavily, whether you are a buyer deciding to wait or a dealer deciding how many demonstrators to order. The tradeoff is time: that box fills only with owner reports, and launch coverage fills the other three first.